Against Democracy and Equality by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781907166259
Google: XDWcLHxfthMC
Amazon: 1907166254
Publisher: Arktos
Published: 2011-02-25T23:00:00+00:00

[2]Loc. cit., April- May 1982, p. 45.

I. The Metaphysics of Equality

The idea of equality is probably as old as mankind itself. Although egalitarian experiments were known to have taken place very early in history and about which there is scant information, it was with Judaism and, later on, Christianity, that we can trace with greater certainty the genesis and the gradual consolidation of the modern belief system of egalitarianism. This chapter will limit itself to the cursory examination of the rise and the consolidation of the egalitarian ideal in Western thought.

A number of authors of liberal, socialist, and conservative persuasion maintain that the modern ideal of equality owes a significant debt to the early Jewish prophets. Thus the French author Gérard Walter, in his book Les origines du communisme, maintains that the roots of the modern egalitarian ideal and the belief in brotherhood and democracy can best be traced to Judaea and early Jewish scriptures.[1] In a similar vein, the American scholar Emanuel Rackman, in his piece ‘Judaism and Equality’, writes that Judaism derives the idea of equality from the fact that God created only one man from whom all humanity is descended. He notes:

That all men have only one progenitor was held to mean that all human beings are born equal. They enjoy this equality by virtue of the very fact that they were born, even if they never attain to the faculty of reason.[2]

Rackman, in fact, sees the decisive importance of Judaism for the development of natural rights, and later human rights, which subsequently became the cornerstone of the American doctrine of natural rights. He adds:

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